Tips for recruiting

Recruiting the right people for your organisation can be a challenge but if you implement the right kind of recruitment strategy it will be a breeze. It’s no longer enough to simply place an advertisement in a newspaper and hope for the right applicant to find your ad. Nowadays you need to have a varied strategy. This means you should be looking offline and online, taking referrals and using your network to find the best talent to fill your vacancies - sometimes you’ll need to search for passive candidates. Even if you do find the right candidate, you’ll still need to get them on board, which will require a solid recruitment process and the right tools.

A strategy

First up - sourcing

There are two main types of sourcing available to a recruiter: active and passive. Passive sourcing is: posting your ad on job boards like, everjobs and LinkedIn or social media sites like: Facebook and Twitter. Here the candidates have to be actively looking for a job This is normally the preferred go-to process for entry level and junior level positions. the best strategy is to write the most attractive job ad possible - really think outside of the box. It’s also important you list the job where your target audience will see the ad, on sites like everjobs etc. This way you’ll reach as many ideal candidates as possible.

Active sourcing is: targeting and approaching the candidates before they approach you. Make sure when you approach the candidate you keep your approach personal, avoid typical “HR speak” as passive candidates usually won’t respond well to this. Ensure you do your homework, know everything you can about the candidate’s past work experience and skills etc. It helps to know how to recruit passive candidates, but make sure your first communication is friendly with only a little bit of information about the role. The more specific your search, the better. If you cast too wide a net you’re likely to waste a lot of time and your responses are likely to become robotic - keep it simple, keep it tight.

Next - transparency & communication

Transparency and communication are both an important part of your recruitment strategy. People on both sides of the hiring process need to see what’s going on in order to understand where you’re at, and then both accept and get on board with the processes. Not all information needs to be disclosed, but there shouldn't be any doubts floating from either management or the candidate. As always, communication is key, don’t leave a candidate in the dark wondering whether they made the cut or not. Whenever you make a decision about the next stages of the recruitment process, communicate the relevant information to each candidate. You also need to ensure the relationship between the recruiter and the hiring manager is effective partnership, in which both parties stand to gain from a friendly, symbiotic relationship. A lack of communication can deteriorate the relationship, which might lead to a misunderstanding, false expectations or even a poor assessment of a candidate.

And Feedbacks

Feedbacks are how someone quantifies or measures the success of HR. Feedbacks also allow you to measure and document how good a candidate is in a non-biased manner, gauge how well the recruitment process works (with metrics, results and backtracking) and finally it measures the quality of the hiring team (recruiters, managers and all others involved in the process). Through feedback, you can gain important insights on what to improve and how you can improve. It will also let you know who’s doing a good job or not - all of this adds up to excellent insights for team building, performance management and KPIs.

To implement this strategy effectively, you need to use the right tools. One of the best tools available to recruiters in Uganda is everjobs, make sure you register an account to start seeing the benefits.

The right recruitment tool - everjobs

One of the best tools available to recruiters in Uganda is everjobs. The site is easy to use and allows you to post your job ad to the thousands of registered users, but it also lets you actively search for candidates - thanks to the CV database. The first thing you’ll need to do is register with everjobs. Below we run through some important steps you should follow to get the most out of your everjobs experience.

Writing a job description

The bet way to find the most qualified candidates is to write a specific job description. If you let an applicant know exactly what you’re looking for, in terms of: job specifications, company culture and required skills, you’ll appeal to the right person. Make sure you explicitly list the required skills/knowledge, as well as the day-to-day tasks the candidate will have to undertake. You can narrow down who applies for the role by listing an “ideal candidate.” This is typically an example of the type of person your company is looking for who can complete the job to a satisfactory level - that way professionals will know exactly what you are looking for and whether they fit the bill.

If there are other general requirements, be sure you list them as well. For example, if you need the job applicant to speak a particular language or to be bi-lingual, say so. As we mentioned before, transparency is key, so give as much pertinent information as possible, especially if the job role requires travel or relocation. There’s nothing worse than getting a shock during the interview, so don’t leave things out of the job ad. Save yourself the time and hassle, list the important details up front.

Some extra tips

You might also want to take a moment to complete your employer profile to reflect your employer brand. This will help you highlight to the candidate why your company is a great place to work. Help to show the company culture by listing what you and your co-workers enjoy the most in your company and testimonials as to what it’s like to work there. Be sure to include any perks, awards or unique aspects of life in your company.

Although adding a salary is optional, if job-seekers know what the salary range is likely to be, they will know if the job is a good fit for them. This will filter out people who might not be in your price-range - saving you time and money. If you don’t yet know the salary range, you can just add: “market competitive.” This will give professionals confidence that their application will be worth their time.

With all this in mind, your next step should be to ensure your recruitment strategy is on point and then register with everjobs.